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Three students reportedly dead in Tennessee school shooting At least three children and three adults killed in shooting at Nashville elementary school
(31 minutes later)
Attacker was shot dead, Nashville police said in a tweet, and the victims have not been identified yet Nashville police say female shooter is now dead following an attack on a Tennessee private school with about 209 students
Police in Nashville, Tennessee, were responding to a school shooting in which the attacker was shot dead by police and local media reported that three students were also dead. Three children and three adults were killed by a female shooter at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday, police said.
“An active shooter event has taken place at Covenant School, Covenant Presbyterian church, on Burton Hills Dr,” Nashville police said in a tweet. “The shooter was engaged by MNPD and is dead. Student reunification with parents is at Woodmont Baptist Church.” Police have yet to publicly identify the shooter or the victims. Police officers shot and killed the attacker at Covenant School, Covenant Presbyterian church on Burton Hills Drive.
More details soon… Authorities did not immediately identify the shooter or the victims.
Don Aaron, a spokesperson for Nashville police, told reporters: “We know at this point that this shooter is a female. She appears to be in her teens although her identification has not been confirmed at this juncture.
“We know that she was armed with at least two assault-type rifles and a handgun. We are [trying] now to identify her.
“She entered the school through a side entrance and traversed her way from the first floor to the second floor, firing multiple shots.
“We now know that there are three students who were fatally wounded, as well as three adults inside the school. We are working to identify those victims. Including the shooter, a total of seven persons were killed as a result of this incident.”
The shooter was dead by 10.27am, Aaron said. The first call about the shooting came at 9.30am.
Aaron said an officer was wounded from cut glass but he knew of no other injuries.
He said: “The shooter was engaged by two of our police officers on a five-member team, and … there are no other gunshot victims, non-lethal that I’m aware of the present.”
Aaron said there were no police personnel assigned to the private school, which is run by the church. He said police were viewing school video footage, adding that the shooting happened in a “lobby type area” and “not in a classroom per se”.
There have been at least 89 instances of gun violence at kindergarten through 12th grade schools or school activities in the US this year, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database resource.
The five dead made the Nashville shooting the 128th mass shooting in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one where at least four people are wounded or killed, not counting the attacker.
The private school in Nashville has about 209 students and 42 staff members, from preschool through sixth grade, Aaron said.
After the shooting, students could be seen walking, holding hands and surrounded by police cars, to the nearby Woodmont Baptist church, where they were being reunited with their parents.
A woman whose mother teaches at the school told news networks they texted while the attack was in progress.
Avery Myrick said her father told her there was “a shooter at the school and then I texted [my mother], and I said just like what was going on?”
“She said she was hiding in the closet and that they were shooting all over and that they were potentially trying to get into a room,” Myrick added. “It was really scary, really sad. I’m just praying for all the families out there.”
Hannah McDonald, a reporter for NewsChannel5 in Nashville, told viewers her mother-in-law was working at the school and was coming back from a break at the time of the shooting.
“My mother in law is the front desk angel … and she was at the school this morning,” McDonald said. “However, Diana was able to come out of this safe. She actually stepped away to take a break.
“The school is kind of situated sideways, if you will. So the front door is actually on the side of the building. And that’s where she sits and so you walk down a long exterior pathway to the front door and then you see her smiling face in the morning there.
“And she and I have not been able to talk but my husband and I have talked and I’ve heard that she is safe.
“She was outside … the school and she heard gunshots. She had just gotten back from her break. She starts her day early. This is an elementary school. People are there at 7am to greet these children. So she had stepped away already when this happened and she got back and she heard gunshots.”
Ramon Antonio Vargas and the Associated Press contributed reporting.